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Friday, 23 March 2012

(Judge) Clements was unmoved. “You have, in some measure, displayed utter
contempt for the courts and the rights of others,” he said. “You appear
to be governed by a higher moral order than the laws of our country.”

“Your determination to break the law is a potential threat to the
well-being of society and plants the seeds of lawlessness, perhaps even
anarchy … You are unable to accord some civility and respect to others.
Your view in law is wrong.” Read more

Wednesday, 14 March 2012

... the Church’s opposition to gay relationships is so patently
unprincipled. In the Church of England we readily bless the second and
even third marriages of couples who never darken our doors, yet we
reject hundreds of our own faithful clergy and laypeople who long to
bring their love and commitment before God and ask his blessing. While
we dare to preach justice and equality in Christ’s name to the world, we
seek exemptions to equality laws when it comes to our own employment
and disciplinary practices. While we threaten to demote or debar
American and Canadian Anglicans for appointing openly gay bishops and
blessing gay unions, we are trying to appease homophobic Anglican
churches in Africa which support extreme social and legal measures
against homosexuals.

Not only gay people are repelled by all this. Many more people of
goodwill who instinctively expect the Church to uphold justice and truth
are scandalised when it so obviously does not. If secularism has gained
ground in Britain in recent years, along with the demand that the
Church of England must be disestablished and surrender its voice in
national life, then it is our mishandling of the gay issue more than
anything else that has brought it about.Read more

In a case which tackled fundamental issues of "biology, human nature and
the hand of fate", the Appeal Court judges said the decision to have a
child can never be a matter of "dry legal contract" and the
father's right to play a role in his son's life had to be recognised.

Observing that "human emotions are powerful and inconstant", Lord
Justice Thorpe said that, despite the women's desire to create "a
two-parent lesbian nuclear family", the father was "seeking to
offer a relationship of considerable value" to his son.

And he told the court: "It is generally accepted that a child gains by
having two parents. It does not follow from that that the addition of a
third is necessarily disadvantageous".

The boy's biological mother says she made a pact with the father during a
restaurant meeting before conception that she and her lesbian lover would
fill the role of "primary parents" and that he would not stand on
his paternal rights.

She and her partner said they felt "bitter and betrayed" after the
father - the mother's former husband in a "marriage of convenience"
to mollify his family - demanded overnight and holiday contact with his son.Read more

Tuesday, 13 March 2012

(The headline and following article are intended for parish newsletters, etc)

No it hasn’t happened, and no, it isn’t likely to happen — not soon, anyway. But if it did, whose
fault would it be?

The policies of the Church of England are, to a large extent, decided through its Synods and
various governing bodies. In addition to the Diocesan and General Synod, there are numerous,
and often very important, bodies like the Bishop’s Council, the Pastoral Committee, and so on.

Elections to these bodies take place every three years. But it is often the same few
people who stand for them and therefore who get elected. They are doing the best they can, but
not many of them tend to be from churches with a passion to put the proclamation of the
gospel and the conversion of non-believers at the centre of diocesan life.

This year is election year. And it
is time to ask, “Will you stand for election?” If enough good-hearted
people got on the Synod, it would make a real difference to the life of
the local church.

To be eligible for election as a layperson, you just have to be a communicant member of the
Church of England, over 16 years of age and on an electoral roll of a parish in the diocese. You
do not have to be a member of the Deanery Synod, though those are the people who actually get
to vote.

Nominations will begin on the 14th May – just a couple of months away – and close on the 8th
June. If you want to stand, now is the time to be thinking about it. Those alarmist headlines may
be a ‘spoof’, but there have been and will be plenty of serious topics up for discussion. If you
have the time and willingness, this could be a very valuable work of personal ministry. Speak to
one of the clergy if you’d like more details.

TP: It’s really interesting that your experience was
after receiving that training, that theological framework, it actually
equipped you to keep growing and changing your mind. The perception
might be that you go to somewhere like Moore College and you learn a
body of knowledge that is fixed forever more. But in fact what you learn
is a framework and a set of tools to keep learning and growing.

PJ: Yes, that’s exactly right. That’s the exact reverse of expectation. My youth fellowship group took me through Louis Berkoff’s Systematic Theology.
And so I went to Moore College thinking I knew it all. But instead they
dismantled much of what I’d learned—especially the sense that here’s
the question, here’s the Bible verse, here’s the answer. They said,
“Well, what does this proof text verse say in its context, and what does
the book say?” And it just didn’t actually prove the point that Louis
said it proved. What Moore College did was radicalize my mind to think
biblically and creatively, rather than giving me all the answers so I
didn’t have to think any more. I had that before I went to College.
College freed me from it.

TP: As you left College, and went out to apply your
newfound understanding in ministry, you found yourself dealing with
people, because ministry is people. Thinking back on your relationships
with people and on the pastoral issues you’ve dealt with, what mistakes
stick out in your mind? Things you wished you’d done differently, things
you’ve learnt from?

PJ: Well, people are an inexact science! You can
wish that every relationship is going to work perfectly—but they don’t
and they’re never going to. And so there are certain people that I’ve
hurt and people who have hurt me. And they would wish, hopefully, that
they hadn’t hurt me, and I certainly wish that I hadn’t hurt them! And
so there are just mistakes that we all make in relationships.
But in general, with people, I think I was too naïve and trusting of
people, especially early in my ministry. I took people too much as I
found them.

I didn’t really believe enough in the doctrine of sin. And so I took
people on face value, which in one sense you have to if you’re going to
trust people, and if you’re going to have a relationship with people.
But over the years you learn that the enthusiast, especially the
newcomer enthusiast, is often the shallow soil that will burn out very
quickly when the opposition comes. And you need to be wary. Read more

Thursday, 8 March 2012

The next meeting of the CDEA, on the 17th
March 2012, will be on "Transforming Evangelical
Strategy".

Rev John Richardson will draw
on themes from his recent book, "A Strategy that Changes the Denomination", then John Dunnett, the head
of the Church Pastoral Aid Society, and Paul Harcourt, vicar
of All Saints Church, Woodford Wells, will offer responses
to stimulate discussion on how
evangelicals can join the diocesan strategy of Transforming
Presence with enthusiasm.

Tuesday, 6 March 2012

... objection to gay marriage isn’t about
religion at all and the letter that the bishops are sending to Catholic churches does, to do them credit, make that clear.

It’s all to do with the nature of marriage. And that is, a natural
institution providing the optimal situation for raising children. It’s
vulgarly biological, marriage — a state
for bringing up children in. And that’s how it’s been for almost all
of human history. Even in ancient Greece, which practically invented
homosexuality — alright, it was
especially about the Socratic master-pupil relationship — reserved
marriage for men and women, for the conceiving and bearing of children.
And it’s that fundamental character of
marriage which makes it essentially heterosexual. It’s to do with the
complementarity of the sexes. Men and women fulfil different roles when
it comes to the rearing of their offspring, and
even in an atypical family like my own, in which I’m the sole
breadwinner, those complementary roles make sense. Children relate
differently to mothers and fathers; they pick up cues about
how the sexes work, even children who go on to become gay. And
departing from that biological foundation for marriage is a radically
new departure.

Obviously, there are infertile normal marriages, which are no less
valid and exemplary for that. The most perfect Catholic marriage I know
is involuntarily childless. Some people marry
post-menopause, and their marriages aren’t second class, just
exceptional. Read more